NOTICE causing SQLException

Our DBA (which isn't that great of a DBA) changed some settings in
postgresql.conf and suddenly our Java application stopped working with
the following message:

*** TerminalManagerError connecting to the DataBase:
Something unusual has occured to cause the driver to fail. Please report
this exception: Exception: java.sql.SQLException: NOTICE: Query
statistics are disabled because parser, planner, or executor statistics
are on.

Stack Trace:

java.sql.SQLException: NOTICE: Query statistics are disabled because
parser, planner, or executor statistics are on.

at org.postgresql.Connection.openConnection(Connection.java:274)
at org.postgresql.Driver.connect(Driver.java:149)
at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:517)
at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:177)
at
immanis.database.DatabaseManager.getConnection(DatabaseManager.java:36)
at
immanis.database.TerminalManager.<init>(TerminalManager.java:66)
at
immanis.database.TerminalManager.getInstance(TerminalManager.java:81)
at immanis.util.Authorizer.authorize(Authorizer.java:75)
at immanis.protocol.ProtocolBase.debug(ProtocolBase.java:58)
at immanis.core.Transaction.begin(Transaction.java:411)
at immanis.core.Transaction.run(Transaction.java:506)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:484)
End of Stack Trace
------------------------------------------------

Connecting to the DB with 'psql' produced this same 'NOTICE' message.
My understanding of this stacktrace is that the JDBC driver mistook this
'NOTICE' for an error and couldn't open a connection.

The backend is 7.2 and the JDBC driver is the latest 7.2 stable build.
Can someone please shed me some light? Thank you very much for any help.

--
[]'s
Daniel Serodio